Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 November 11

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November 11

English: Negation after a question

Hi all,

I'm a French native speaker and I live in Asia now. I have an English friend and I noticed that he always adds a negation at the end of a question. For example, "You are coming, aren't you?" or "You'll go there, won't you?". It sounds quite weird for me cause I haven't heard that a lot in American series or movies. When I started to speak English, I used the French way of asking a question: "You are coming, no?" but I know now nobody says that in English. I sometimes use "You are coming, right?" cause it sounds much better than "aren't you" (makes me feel like I'm talking like a grandpa). So, what is the best (or coolest way) to ask a question in English? You will answer my question, won't you?... right? 42.114.193.73 (talk) 14:14, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

Not sure how you measure "coolness", but "innit?" is apparently popular in Multicultural London English (and is not just short for "isn't it?", but may be used as a universal tag question). 86.186.80.52 (talk) 15:15, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

The negatives that you mention (aren't you, won't you, isn't it) are very common in the English of England and would be considered the usual intensifiers. Use of "innit" marks you as being part of a particular sub-culture, but is often heard. Your use of "right" might be considered more modern without the stigma of "innit". Dbfirs 15:44, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

Pretty common in America too. And "innit" or at least "idnit" is common in the rural south and possibly elsewhere. Then there's the related Milwaukeean expression "aina hey".[1] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:58, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

These questions at the end are called tag questions. English uses a huge variety of them ("wouldn't he", "didn't they", "shouldn't she", "won't you", "will you" ...) but French gets away with the all-purpose "n'est-ce pas?", n'est-ce pas? :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:59, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

That construction figures prominently in a song called "Didn't We?"[2] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:09, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

• Odd, now that the OP mentions it, the "You are coming, aren't you?" construction is indeed rare in colloquial American English. "Aren't you coming?" would be the normal expression. "You are coming, aren't you?" sounds not only highly emphatic, but also dismissive or sarcastic to my ears, yet but fully native and comprehensible nonetheless. μηδείς (talk) 22:33, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned "ain't you / ain't it" yet. Or maybe it ain't cool anymore? And then there's the famous Canadian "eh". — Kpalion^(talk) 11:33, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

WHAAOE:Eh. 82.13.208.70 (talk) 11:55, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

A line from the song "Alley Oop" goes "He sho' is hip, ain't he?" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:09, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

A frequent construction by Jerry Colonna, such as this from The Road to Rio: "We're too late. Exciting, though, wasn't it?" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:09, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

42.114.193.73 -- A somewhat related issue is that in some east Asian languages (though I'm not sure exactly which ones) it's usual to answer a negative question by taking the negative element into account, so the answer given to a question such as "Are you going to the store today?" might be the exact opposite of the answer given to "Aren't you going to the store today?" There's a little on this at Yes-no question#Answers and it's glancingly alluded to at Polarity item. French itself has a partial version of this, where "Si" is a positive reply to a negative. And of course, there's "Yes! We Have No Bananas"... -- AnonMoos (talk) 23:47, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

A hard one... ["This is nothing of which I would say I am proud of"]

... I guess at least: "This is nothing of which I would say I am proud of" vs. "This is nothing [which] I would say of I am proud of". I guess the latter is wrong, but if so, why? I've learned that usually you are free to place the preposition either at the beginning or at the end of a prepositional relative clause (is that the appropriate term, by the way?) and that you can leave out the relative pronoun in defining relative clauses... So, from a strictly grammatical perspective, there shouldn't be anything wrong with that, should there?--Herfrid (talk) 20:29, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

The point you have missed is that wherever you put it, you only need one "of" - so it is either "this is nothing of which I would say I am proud" or "this is nothing (which) I would say I am proud of" (you can leave out the "which"). Pedantically, it is often said that you should not end a sentence with a preposition - but English speakers often do, and there is nothing really wrong with it. There is a famous Churchill quote: "This is the sort of pedantry up with which I will not put!" Wymspen (talk) 20:38, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

(Well, allegedly it was Churchill.) Wikipedia's article is Preposition stranding. --69.159.60.147 (talk) 21:29, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

Wympspen's given the correct answer, you only need one "of" and you can put it in the "of which" or stranded position and be fully understood by any competent speaker. μηδείς (talk) 22:29, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks a lot already so far! So, to put it straight, would the second "of" be wrong, in fact, or just unusual?--Herfrid (talk) 22:38, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

Both, really. I mean, people sometimes hypercorrect themselves, as in "To whom do you wish to speak to?". Or they have an extraneous 'that': "I am telling you that, despite what you insist is the case, that I did put the money in the bank". You can find examples of just about every error it's possible to make; whether any particular one is common enough to be "unusual" or rare enough to be "almost unheard of", will depend. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 01:25, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

@JackofOz: Okay, thanks. I was just asking because I thought this: What if we replaced the first "of" with "about", thus saying "This is nothing [which] I would say about I am proud of", as the "about" belongs to "say" (→ to say sth about sth) and the "of" to "proud" (→ to be proud of sth). Do you see what I mean?--Herfrid (talk) 17:13, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

No, that's an irregular construction. Wouldn't even be used in informal speech. Akld guy (talk) 19:13, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Okay, but then it would be "This is nothing [which] I would say about I am proud" or what? Though in general, the collocation goes "to be proud of sth", not "about", doesn't it? Why do you call that an "irregular construction" then?--Herfrid (talk) 15:22, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

English sentence construction doesn't usually start with a "this is nothing" exclusion when the rest of the sentence refers to something that does exist. It's counter-intuitive to do so. I suggest you drop all variations on that and try putting the negative elsewhere: "This is something about which I would say I am not proud." Akld guy (talk) 19:18, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

Hmm, I don't know, I don't mind the "this is nothing" beginning. I would burn the which, though. This is nothing I would say I am proud of works just fine. --Trovatore (talk) 19:22, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

"Burn the which". Yuk, yuk, I saw what you did there.  :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:17, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

Must be the season of the which we spoke earlier. --Trovatore (talk) 23:13, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

That's a really tortured way of getting there, and it still ends the sentence with a preposition. Akld guy (talk) 20:50, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

That's not a huge problem, but I think it would be much more idiomatic to say This is nothing not something I would say I am proud of. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:04, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

I don't think it's "tortured" at all, but I agree with Jack that "not something" is (slightly) better in most cases. I think the connotation is very slightly different, though I don't know how I'd articulate the difference, so there might be situations where you would deliberately choose the "nothing" version. --Trovatore (talk) 21:35, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

@Trovatore: Now, to recapitulate: Are we speaking in terms of style or grammar here? This is not something about which I would say I am proud of — is that grammatically (!) wrong or not?--Herfrid (talk) 19:06, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Oh, I don't know. It looks like an editing error, like you forgot you had written "about which" so you put the "of" at the end, or you went back and added "about which" and forgot to delete the "of". It hits my "bad style" button so hard that I can't quite tell whether it's a grammatical error.

If you took out "I would say" then it would definitely be ungrammatical. But with "I would say" I can't quite tell. You could maybe come up with a remotely defensible parsing where "proud of" is something you're saying about something, and the "something" is pointed to by both the "of" and the "which". --Trovatore (talk) 20:29, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

German news phrases

On German TV news, they often say things like "Und [damit] nun zum Sport / zu den aktuellen Meldungen des Tages mit Judith Rakers". What expressions do you use in the UK and the US respectively for these news transitions?--Herfrid (talk) 22:48, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

What would be an approximate literal translation for those words? Google Translate seems not to be functioning. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:15, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

In any case, typically the news anchor would say something like, "And now here with Sports is Mike Buzzcut." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:11, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

damit kommen wir zum Ende des Programms → that brings us to the end of our programmes (Brit) → or programs (US). --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 01:03, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

"end of our program"... the final 's' in the German is genitive. —Stephen (talk) 09:29, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

For further research (though I wasn't able to find a list of typical phrases), this type of transition is also called "segue". (Googling "CNN headline news' segue of the day" will give you an awkward one. And there was a character on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, the "impeccably dressed and debonair" Segue Sam, known for his "witty, smooth segues to the next guest"). ---Sluzzelin talk 12:50, 12 November 2017 (UTC)